For more than a decade, Yto Barrada has engaged with the social realities of her home city Tangier in poetic and politically involved photo and film works. As Deutsche Bank’s “Artist of the Year” 2011, Barrada realized the exhibition Riffs at the Deutsche Guggenheim, presenting her work to a wide public in Germany for the first time. After the premiere in Berlin, the exhibition moved on to WIELS in Brussels, Renaissance Society in Chicago, IKON Gallery in Birmingham, and Museo d'arte contemporanea Roma (MACRO). Now the exhibition tour is ending in Fotomuseum Winterthur.
Since it was founded in 1993, the museum has developed into one of the
most renowned forums for photography in Europe. In addition to
historical positions such as Eugène Atget and Edward Weston,
as well as thematic exhibitions, it primarily shows contemporary
photographers and artists. Solo exhibitions have been devoted to William Eggleston, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, and Roni Horn. In January 2012, the museum initiated the blog Still Searching,
a platform for international experts and artists who write about
various aspects of the medium of photography. Users can comment on
their contributions, spawning lively discussions.

Yto Barrada
(who was born in 1971) views herself as a chronicler of current
developments in the city in which she lives. “My nervous system is
linked to this place,” she has said. Tangiers was a place of longing
for literati such as Paul Bowles, Truman Capote, and William S. Burroughs.
Subsequently the high society discovered the charms of the “white
city,” and at the end of the sixties hippies flocked to the Moroccan
metropolis to fuel their oriental fantasies. Today, Tangier is being
conquered by tourists and international investors. The city is
expanding. Old buildings and fallow land are disappearing, and new
building complexes are vanquishing the countryside. But while droves of
tourists are heading south to the country, Moroccans’ path to the
north, to the EU, is blocked. Barrada reacts to this contradictory
situation in her works, but without polemical hyperbole. She observes
things with tranquility and respect. Her nearly static square color
photographs afford views of people, situations, landscapes, houses – of
a place whose residents seem to be trapped in a state of permanent
waiting. Both real and allegorical, Barrada’s works ask us to take a
closer look.